One of the first surprises when I entered Belmarsh prison was that all my books were confiscated. I had taken a suitcase of books to the Old Bailey three times as I waited for the inevitable custodial sentence given the judge involved. I was not allowed to take my books into Belmarsh, or writing

When will the denial stop? The shocking revelations about the serial, serious sexual abuse of vulnerable young girls in the North of England, including my Rotherham constituency, should wake up ministers, the police, local authorities and leaders of Britain’s Asian community to the need for a

Where is Senator George Mitchell when you need him? The peacemaker cast his magic spell in Ulster and is trying hard to do the same in the Middle East. Could he take an hour off en route through London and see if he can make peace between MPs and the controversial new quango, the Independent

The Government giveth. The Government taketh away. For the past three months I have been in possession of the most useful gift that any British government has ever given me. In my shirt-pocket wallet, grouped with credit cards, my pass for the Commons, my driving licence and my Bannatyne’s gym

The Government giveth. The Government taketh away. For the past three months I have been in possession of the most useful gift that any British government has ever given me. In my shirt-pocket wallet, grouped with credit cards, my pass for the Commons, my driving licence and my Bannatyne’s gym

The periodic crises that have shaken world capitalism in the century and a half since Marx wrote Das Kapital are marked by a common political phenomenon. It is the rise of political anti-Semitism. Attacks on Jews and Jewishness constitute the canary in the coal mine that tells us something is going

It took hundreds of pages of the Federalist papers, a few dozen men locked for weeks in a sealed room in Philadelphia and a bloody civil war for the US constitution to be accepted. So the little local difficulties in France, the Netherlands and now Ireland must be seen in a broader perspective.

BRITISH EUROSCEPTICS were in heaven yesterday. Never have the French been so popular with the Conservative Party. For a few days the sturdy yeomen of France will be the new heroes for British politicians and commentators whose stock-in-trade is unending Brussels-bashing. Then we will wake up.

Once in a while there comes a magic moment in the Commons when the veils of obfuscation and parliamentary blah, blah vanish and stark clarity is there for all to see. Such a moment came earlier this summer when Ian Taylor, a former Conservative minister, was describing how he was sitting in the tea